Podcast Survivor: The Business of Podcasting is Booming
The business of podcasting continues to attract serious coverage, which I report here each week. This week coverage comes from the Columbia Journalism Review and PBS’s MediaShift. There’s good reason for this attention: the business of podcasting is booming. This is a good thing for listeners, producers, and even stations The CJR piece focuses exclusively […]
Internet radio hosts and fans ask FCC to protect net neutrality
Over the summer I mentioned a filer in the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on net neutrality who, identifying himself as a Internet radio host, complained that the unreliability of his broadband account forced him to resort to a more expensive ISDN line. “Neither my telco, Smart City nor Comcast can provide fast consistent speeds for […]
How community radio can adapt to digital disruption
This is part one of a series identifying ways community radio stations can adapt and ultimately embrace digital disruption as a tool to empower communities through media. A lot of the pushback I get from community radio stations – and yes, well-resourced NPR affiliates – is that there aren’t enough people to work on digital. […]
RTÉ Longwave Closure Postponed
The imminent closure of the Irish public broadcaster’s longwave service we reported last week has been postponed until January 19, 2015. Its original shut down date was next week, October 27. The Managing Director of RTÉ Radio Jim Jennings plans to travel to the UK to meet with community groups affected by the loss of […]
The Secret Machine Behind Soviet Numbers Stations
I recently learned of a series of YouTube videos that show a German machine that is alleged to be the voice behind Soviet cold war numbers stations. The videos, uploaded four years ago, show something that looks like a piece of electronic lab equipment that emits a sampled or synthesized voice rattling off a programmed […]
Spinning Indie Field Trip – WHRC at Haverford College
My final radio station visit while in the Philadelphia-area this April was to see the station where it all began for me, WHRC at Haverford College. I was actually able to visit the station twice this spring, once while school was still in session on April 9 and then again during my college reunion in […]
Sex, broadcasting, and the genius of WFMU
“Some people hear radio as it is and ask why. I seek radio as it is not but as it damn well ought to be.” So begins filmmaker Tim K. Smith’s marvelous documentary Sex and Broadcasting; a film about WFMU. The doc’s IMDB page describes the film as a 76 minute exploration of “the world’s […]
Number of U.S. Radio Stations on the Rise, Especially LPFM, according to New FCC Count
The FCC released its quarterly list of the total number of licensed broadcast stations this week and once again the number of radio stations has increased since last quarter. As of September 30, there were 15,433 licensed full power radio stations in the United States. The only category that decreased was the number of AM […]
College Radio Watch: Best College Radio Stations?, Hampden-Sydney College Turns Back FM License, New LPFMs and More News
Right now I’m making all of my final plans for next week’s College Broadcasters Inc. (CBI) conference in Seattle (October 23-25). I’ll be speaking on two panels and am also in the midst of scheduling visits to a bunch of radio stations in the area for my radio station field trip series. This will be […]
LPFM Watch: More than 40 New Grants to Birthchoice, Art x FM, Poor Magazine, Providence Academy and Others
It was a big week for LPFM grants, with the total number of issued construction permits for the 2013 filing window passing 1400. More than 40 permits were granted in the past week to a wide range of non-profits, including cultural groups, public access television stations, religious groups, schools, arts-oriented non-profits, as well as to […]